Outer Science
by icewolfheartsmuffins
Summary: "In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost."
1. Prologue

**_Standard things. Disclaimers. Don't own._**

**_Lots of wonky stuff in this story._**

**_Updates are never regular, get them when they come out._**

**_Love you all. 3_**

**_-ihm_**

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><p>It was cold.<p>

The sensation wasn't new. It was just the beginning of feeling again.

(_It was cold_.)

Pain. Pain that had never faded but she had faded out of, striking back. Sharp stabs that punctured every movement, from the slow blinking of her eyes, to the fingers that scraped the ground below her for purchase. Stabbing that made her gasp, made her choke, spitting, coughing the blood that collected into her chest, her throat, her mouth, onto the ground.

(_It was cold_.)

There was commotion about her. She knew, she could hear it, under the white noise buzzing into her ears, filling her head with a static that collected. Others finishing what she had started, what she knew she had started...and failed to finish.

(_It was cold_.)

She couldn't see. Not from her eyes, lashes finally closing, tacky with blood. Behind her lids all that played were patterns and flashes of light that moved too fast for her frosted brain to keep up. Did it have meaning? Did it matter? It didn't seem to, really. Nothing mattered right now.

(_It was cold_.)

She was growing numb where she lay, unknowing if her fingers were even moving anymore, the feeling of not feeling sliding from the tips up to her arms. Cold seeped into her side, through the broken armor and along her ribs, puncturing into her lungs as sharply as a dagger. Her legs felt as if they were being speared with a thousand needles, sharp and sudden before the sensation died off completely. The white noise in her head grew.

(_It was cold_.)

A sliver of metal...rubble or a shattered part of something she had been using...a gun, a knife...burned against a bare arm, so cold it felt like fire. She wanted to move. She knew she needed to move.

But blood was freezing in her throat, her nose, along her face, lungs pained by any simple effort, body dead to any fleeting, coherent commands she could think to make.

Hands grabbed her suddenly. Freezing hands, hauling her upright as she sputtered and blood, hot and fresh, tore it way up her throat and through her lips, steaming on contact with air so cold it burned. There was the sensation of something ripping, tearing, lashing out internally as her heart kicked up a feeble beat and her eyes tried to open. They failed, and she heard a voice. The words never mattered. She was beyond understanding what was being said. The anger was something she could taste though, as hot as her blood as something burned into her veins from the touch.

(_It was cold.)_

And while it was the sensation that awoke her, it was sending her back to oblivion.

Lips pressed to hers, so cold she had a disjointed thought that her lips must be blue with cold, if they weren't already. She could feel the pressure, of something breathing into her mouth, trying to clear the passage to her lungs, a burning that punctured its way down to her core.

She was too cold to scream. Hadn't enough air for the action, but a splutter, blood forcing its way back up.

Fingers not her own wiped at the blood coating her eyes.

She breathed in.

And knew no more.

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><p><em> So we tell this story, even if we start at the end.<em>


	2. Loki's State of the World

**_3_**

**_-ihm_**

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><p>Whatever he expected when he fell, it was not this.<p>

Because Loki had turned to face his judgment as he let go. As the light of the Bifrost behind him faded into shadows and the distant nebulas below reflected in his gaze.

Loki had expected to die, and in his most desperate moment, the void had been irrevocably and irresistibly beautiful. It had danced and called for him, the darkness reaching out, inviting and warmer than the despair and frost that ran through his bones. More welcoming than the chill of heartache that pierced every sense he had.

_(No, Loki.)_

_(No.)_

The rejection still soured on his tongue, curdled his blood.

_(No. No Loki.) _

And now? There was none of the comfort the void promised. No spark of the beauty that beckoned him.

Oh, how it _lied_, and now...now he was _here_. Forever falling, but never moving. So close to the pinpricks of light that were faraway stars that he could _reach out_ and imagine grasping them, imagine the warmth they would have in his palm, a warmth that would flood his arm and forever chase the ice from his life. A warmth that would cleanse him from the evils of his blood. A cruel fantasy. He cursed it.

Cursed the distant stars and their glimmer of hope.

Cursed the weakness that had him indulge in such things.

Cursed the lies.

(_You are my son._)

So Loki closed his eyes.

In this infinite but utterly confined space, he could block it out. The sight of the glittering stars that always seemed to morph into nothing but searing pain in his eyes and chest.

He did not cry.

This was not what Loki expected. Could it be it's what he deserved? For what he had done? For what he had been forced to do?

For what he _was_?

_(Loki, no!)_

_(Am I cursed?)_

He should have been furious about it all. Maybe he was. But the anger burned only hot enough to keep him alive, in the state he had made for himself. A prison of his mind, everything turned upon itself and tearing at his thoughts with the ferocity of starved wolves.

_(His skin was blue.)_

_(It crept up his arms.)_

_(Red eyes stared at him. His skin was blue. There was blood on his hands, freezing.)_

_(The Casket sung at him with the songs of winter. His skin was blue.)_

And he fell, but did not fall.

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><p>How long had passed?<p>

Days? Weeks? A year? A decade? A century? There was no sense to it.

He could have fallen for a thousand years and not even an hour.

So it was a jarring sensation when he stopped. Even in the reality that he was moving and not, there was the indication, somewhere, in the back of his head, in every nerve in his body, that he had _stopped_. Frozen in the darkness without a single suggestion that he had been caught. And surely the emptiness had no _end?_

So Loki opened his eyes, slowly, hearing the rime upon them crack and break off. Waited for his sight to adjust to the everlasting shade upon him.

And he saw himself.

Mirrored darkly, warped upon with the ice of his fall. As crisp as looking into a mirror of polished obsidian, it could be nothing else. His hand rose as if to touch it, fingers numb as they pressed upon the surface.

The image didn't disappear. It didn't waver. It showed his surprise as clearly as any looking glass.

_** Must we do this again?**_

_**A thousand years you fall.**_

_** Again and again, anticipated in your volatility.**_

Was this madness? The voice was his own.

Had he been a child and an old man...Had he been a woman and himself.

It lingered in his ears, leached into his skin and slid it's way to and from his mind with the potency of thunder and so quiet he couldn't cognize the force of it. He didn't _hear_ it. He couldn't have. It was too intense, too ingrained into his bones to ever be heard.

A sound so deep that it made him ache, and the reflection wavered, as if the surface it was upon was moving.

Loki had to breathe. He could not.

_** So let this be another trial.**_

Light from below. True light. Agonizing in its intensity, the ice steaming from his skin in an instant. And yet, he had to look down. It burned into his eyes, his arm rose to protect his vision from something he could never articulate.

(_The faint impression of eyes as large as the Bifrost Gate._

_A throat the size of the grand hall of the palace._

_ A __**galaxy**__ burning to life at the back of it.)_

And the light consumed him completely, burning him until there was nothing but the sense of white.


End file.
